Health Care / Medicine

The Author of ‘Confessions of a Sociopath’ Might Be This Law Professor

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They would greenlight a mash-up of this movie and Legally Blonde now.

It appears that a lot of you would like to know which law professor authored the “Confessions of a Sociopath” summary and book that we discussed yesterday. I guess it’s news if it appears that one of your law professors has gone on television to say that she might murder someone. Sources have come forward about the author’s possible identity, so we’ll share with you what we’re being told while noting that the anonymous author hasn’t yet officially come forward.

It seems that donning a wig and going on Dr. Phil to talk about your sociopathic thoughts doesn’t protect your identity as much as one would think

[Note the UPDATE after the jump....]

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Sociopath Law Professor Admits To Being A Sociopath

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Have you ever thought that your law professor was a sadistic bastard? Have you ever felt like the prosecutor across the table was an emotional black hole? Would it freak you out if you turned out to be clinically right?

We’ve talked a lot about mental health recently, from panic buttons to Asperger’s (or autism spectrum disorder, if you prefer). But today we’ve come across a truly chilling article from a law professor who admits that she’s a sociopath and writes about how law is the perfect field for people like her.

I’m turning the snark meter way down on this post because, well, I don’t want to be murdered…

Note the UPDATE at the end of this post concerning the professor’s possible identity.

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Yes, It Is Worth Making A Federal Case Over Angelina Jolie’s Boobs

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This morning, the New York Times published an op-ed by actress Angelina Jolie discussing her decision to get a preventative double mastectomy.

Jolie is being hailed as an inspiration for coming forward with this story, which marks an amazing turn-around for a woman who used to make out with her brother and carry vials of her then-husband’s blood around her neck.

The actress decided to take the preventative measure after genetic testing determined that she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.

Now, Jolie is a movie star married to another movie star, so the decision to undergo an expensive procedure did not deter her like it will many women in the United States.

Not the mastectomy. Insurance usually covers that if the patient presents such risks. No, the expensive procedure is the initial genetic testing. And the Supreme Court might be able to do something about that in the next couple of months…

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.02.13

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* OMG, you guys! Michael Jackson just died. At least according to concert promoter AEG Live, whose lawyer FINALLY conceded to the claim that Jackson had passed. [CNN]

* The new NRA President is a tool lawyer! [Washington Times]

* Jim Beck reviews the works of our own Mark Herrmann: Inside Straight(affiliate link) and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy [Drug and Device Law]

* Quinn Emanuel announces its spoils following up on the departure of Michael Lyle and Eric Lyttle from Weil. [Quinn Emanuel]

* Studies suggest that the more elite the school, the more likely its female graduates drop out of the work force after getting married and having kids. Women who run in elite circles and are therefore more likely to marry into financial secure partnerships are also less likely to keep grinding away at a job in order to put their kids through school? No kidding. [The Careerist]

* Administrative Law Judges file suit over perceived quotas that they claim trigger the depletion of Social Security. Cost-cutting legislators think the ALJs should be depleting the fund more. Blerg. [Washington Post]

* Check out the T-shirt sold at Santa Clara University. The proximity to the Santa Clara Law shirts is… fitting?

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Righteous Indignation: The Trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and Some Thoughts on Abortion

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Ed. note: This is the second installment of Righteous Indignation, our new column for conservative-minded lawyers.

In Pennsylvania earlier this week, the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell drew to a close. Gosnell, a West Philadelphia abortion doctor, is accused of murdering four children who were allegedly born alive after Gosnell’s efforts to abort them. The jury now considers four counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of the children, along with one count of third-degree murder for the death of Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese refugee to whom Gosnell allegedly gave a lethal overdose of Demerol. He also faces twenty-three counts of performing illegal late-term abortions. If convicted of first-degree murder, Gosnell faces the death penalty.

Trial witnesses, including clinic workers, offered gruesome testimony. Some of the allegations: the lethal drug Gosnell injected into the babies in utero failed to stop their hearts, and they emerged from their mothers’ birth canals breathing, wriggling, even crying; Gosnell then “snipped” the backs of the babies’ necks with scissors, severing their spinal cords; and Gosnell joked about the size of the “fetuses” whose spinal cords he cut, including a baby who he said was big enough “to walk me home.”

A mother of another of Gosnell’s alleged victims reportedly delivered her baby into a toilet while waiting for Dr. Gosnell. A clinic worker testified that the child made swimming motions in the toilet bowl before another employee snipped the child’s neck. Prosecutors dubbed Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society clinic a “House of Horrors”….

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Does Your Law School Need A Panic Button?

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Banks need panic buttons. Jodie Foster needs a panic room. I only panic when it’s nine in the afternoon. But the thought that American law schools should have a panic button in their career services office didn’t occur to me until I attended the NALP panel on spotting mental health issue in the law school community.

The panel consisted of Hanna Stotland, a career and admissions consultant; Dr. Nada Stotland, Professor of Psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center; and William Chamberlain, Director of Career Services at DePaul Law School.

I thought I was in for a touchy-feely hour about how it’s wrong to exclude the awkward gunner in the front row from all the reindeer games. Instead it was a sobering medical breakdown of the mental illnesses that afflict 20 percent of law students — and what career services officers can do to help stop people from literally killing themselves, which happens at way more law schools than I realized.

And yeah, your CSO should probably get a panic button installed if it doesn’t have one already….

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Fap Law: A Meditation on Masturbation

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“You do it to yourself, you do. And that’s what really hurts.”

– Radiohead, Just

A few weeks ago, I blew your collective mind with a post about marijuana cigarettes and the lawyers who love them. Everyone agreed that it was a true revelation and a rare insight into the human condition. Lawyers stopped each other on the Subway, put down their five-dollar foot longs, and talked about pot use and what it means for lawyers who are still struggling to find jobs in an economy that deems them superfluous and sometimes even magnanimous about their superfluity. The words. They just pile up sometimes, one after another.

You know what else takes the edge off?

Good old ‘bating. Partner drops a big ol’ pile of suck on your desk at 5 p.m.? Might as well ‘bate. Judge says your motion is denied? ‘Bate. Your client is found guilty of ‘bating? Well, we’ll get to that.

When it comes to lowering stress, there’s not a single thing better than masturbation. It’s sex with someone you love, as Woody Allen once said (before he impeached himself on issues of appropriate objects of love).

Yesterday, New York Magazine highlighted a movement to deny oneself… oneself. And if you or David Lat or anyone else not named you or David Lat thinks I can’t stretch the connections between that New York Magazine article and the legal community into something approaching an entire post, you’re sorely mistaken.

Because we’re about to talk about the most Learned of Hands….

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Non-Sequiturs: 02.20.13

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* Palestinian prisoners are smuggling spooge out of prison to make babies on the outside. The article raises some fascinating legal and ethical questions, but thankfully fails to explain the logistics of the scheme. [Bill of Health / Harvard Law Petrie-Flom Center]

* Florida is looking into the question of whether judges and attorneys can be Facebook friends. But it’s so useful to have real-time feedback of which arguments that judge is going to “Like.” [IT-Lex]

* The government has indicted a lawyer on charges of bankrolling a synthetic marijuana operation. So real-life Kentucky is just like Justified Kentucky. [USA Today]

* The defense of Oscar Pistorius springs back and has a good day. [Deadspin]

* This article about KU Law Professor Stephen Ware’s arrest on domestic abuse charges sounds bad, but he’s actually a hero for putting together an elaborate and interactive issue-spotting exam for his final. [6 News Lawrence]

* This will be fun. What are the weirdest constitutional arguments ever asserted in court? [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Former Senator Pete Dominici admits that he’s the father of Vegas lawyer Adam Laxalt of Lewis and Roca. While a Senator for New Mexico, Dominici was nailing the daughter of Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt… just to be neighborly. [Reno Gazette-Journal]

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Biglaw Perk Watch: Adoption Benefits
(Plus an update on the gay gross-up.)

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When it comes to the employee benefit known as “tax equalization for same-sex health benefits” (aka the “gay gross-up”), maybe the pertinent question should be which firms don’t offer it. Since our recent write-up, we’ve heard about more leading law firms that offer this perk, taking the total number of firms that have it to more than 40. (The new firms are mentioned below.)

So let’s move on to the next front, which we also alluded to in our prior post: adoption and surrogacy-related benefits. They’re not nearly as common as tax equalization for same-sex health benefits, but a handful of firms appear to offer them.

Let’s find out which ones, shall we?

UPDATE (2/8/2013, 1:00 AM): A noteworthy update about the legal status of surrogacy, after the jump.

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(Plus an update on the gay gross-up.)“

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Quote of the Day: A (Chicken)Pox on Your Law School!

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Chickenpox does not discriminate.

– Diane Webb, a registered nurse specialist, commenting on the likelihood of student infection after news of a chickenpox outbreak at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

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